This invention relates to devices for separating continguous articles, more particularly upright laminar articles, such as biscuits being conveyed during processing. It should be understood that in the United Kingdom the term "biscuits" connotes a structure more akin to "crackers" or certain kinds "cookies" as the latter terms are commonly used in the United States.
The invention may be used to periodically hold back the supply of contiguous biscuits being conveyed during the processing thereof, by employment of a movable separating member capable of being inserted between immediate adjacent biscuits.
Co-pending U.K. patent application No. 83.31261, (U.S. Pat. application Ser. No. 556,691 of John G. Phillipson, filed Nov. 30, 1983 corresponds), describes apparatus for handling a plurality of streams of laminar articles so as to form a lesser number of streams. The first-mentioned streams are periodically required to be arrested from proceeding along a conveying path, and the device of the present invention may ideally be used with the apparatus.
Biscuits are relatively fragile articles and it is extremely difficult for a separating member to be inserted into a supply of biscuits without causing breakage of those biscuits adjacent the entry point of the separating member.
Known separating devices make use of separating members which are positively, i.e. forcefully, moveable downwardly towards and upwardly away from the path of an advanced supply. Thus, if the separating member contacts the top edge of a biscuit rather than finding its way between two immediately adjacent biscuits, it causes damage by shearing through the contacted biscuit and breaking it up.
Such damage is unacceptable for several reasons, not least because the broken portions of biscuits can jam machinery. It is therefore an object of this invention to provide a separating device using a separating member which will locate itself in a supply of biscuits without causing damage, even if the separating member initially comes into contact with the top edge of a biscuit.
It is a further object of the invention to provide such a device which will also hold back an advanced supply of the biscuits.